Democracy for America and ActBlue are proud to present the annual Netroots Nation Candidate Meet and Greet, featuring candidates running at every level, from school board to U.S. Senate.  The event is Friday, June 21, at 5 p.m.

Last year’s event featured Elizabeth Warren, Darcy Burner and Alan Grayson. This year you’ll hear from Barbara Buono, who’s running against Chris Christie, and many more to be announced soon. Don’t miss out on your chance to meet progressive rock stars and enjoy drinks sponsored by ActBlue.

Our friends at the Courage Campaign have announced that they’re throwing a party to open Netroots Nation 2013. We’re really excited about this event because it’s the first time we’ve had an official opening party. Over the years people have come in town early and done smaller happy hours or dinners with friends, but this will be different.

The event, Liquid Courage, will feature Gov. Howard Dean and will be held on Wednesday, June 19th from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.

Make sure you book your travel and accommodations accordingly, you won’t want to miss out.

You can also RSVP here.

After a two-month long process of reading, scoring and discussing, we are thrilled to announce our 2013 agenda. And this year, we’ve expanded our offerings to include and additional 10 trainings and 10 panels.

Our final list of 80 panels includes some timely topics like the 2012 elections, the current immigration fight and climate change, plus we’ll highlight campaigns and issues from our host state of California. Our agenda is rich with stories of workers, students and activists working to fight for equality and a better, more just society. And this year we’re also including some topics not often touched on by the traditional media, including transgender issues, mass incarceration and drones.

Click here to peruse the full list of panels and trainings.

Special thanks to everyone who submitted proposals. We had almost 500 submissions this year, which gave us an amazing breadth of topics to consider.

One of the coolest things about Netroots Nation is that our panels and training sessions come exclusively from our community. We kicked off this process at the beginning of the year by asking folks to submit their ideas, and when the deadline rolled around we had 397 panels and 115 training sessions in the mix.

We gathered a group of 148 experts from across the Netroots to help us select the strongest submissions. Collectively we spent about 37 hours during March and April on the phone discussing each one, and countless hours in between reading, preparing and debating the best ones. The submissions this year were by far the highest quality yet so it certainly wasn’t an easy task. We’d like to extend our thanks to all of the people who gave their time and expertise to help us create this year’s great agenda.

Please join us in thanking the following people:

Taz Ahmed
Aniello Alioto
Dan Ancona
Jen Ancona
John Aravosis
Mudcat Arnold
Veronica Arreola
Dante Atkins
David Atkins
Aspen Baker
Joanne Bamberger
Sheila Bapat
Elisa Batista
Ana Beatriz Cholo
Beth Becker
Zahra Billoo
Adam Bink
Adam Bonin
Adam Bonin
John Brougher
Tory Brown
Matt Browner-Hamlin
Arturo Carmona
Yahaira Carrillo
Victoria Cepeida-Mojarro
Charlie Chamberlain
Nathaniel Charny
Laura Clawson
Will Coley
Tula Connell
Cheryl Contee
Robert Cruickshank
Davey D
Kyle de Beausset
Colin Delany
Addisu Demissie
Digby
Sam Dryzmala
Beka Economopoulos
Kimberly “Dr. Goddess” Ellis
Jessica Eting
Amy Everitt
Marta Evry
Rebecca Farmer
Brandon Friedman
Karl Frisch
Christie George
Julielyn Gibbons
Doug Gordon
Sarah Granger
Richard Graves
Adam Green
Greg Greene
Joaquin Guerra
Marce Gutierrez
Lisa Hayes
Denise Heitzenroder
Nathan Henderson-James
Jamie Henn
Matt Hildreth
Paul Hogarth
Heather Holdridge
Christina Hollenbeck
Larry Huynh
Anita Jackson
Elon James White
Dave Johnson
Brad Johnson
Whit Jones
Kaili Joy Gray
Keith Kamisugi
Cindy Kang
Timothy Karr
Lorelei Kelly
Barry Kendall
Maria Teresa Kumar
Jess Kutch
Sharon Kyle
Alex Lawson
Linda Lee
Charles Lenchner
Brian Leubitz
Elana Levin
Cynthia Liu
Matt Lockshin
Mike Lux
Jackie Mahendra
Marianne Manilov
Amanda Marcotte
Chris Massicotte
Tom Matzzie
Zerlina Maxwell
Joan McCarter
Jamie McGonnigal
Matt McGregor
Seth Michaels
RL Miller
Adam Mordecai
Mike Moschella
Josh Nelson
John Neurohr
Will Neville
Karina Newton
Gloria Nieto
David Nir
Matt Ortega
Josh Orton
Liz Owen
Tobias Packer
Christine Pelosi
Rachel Perrone
Nico Pitney
Dick Price
Jim Pugh
Adam Quinn
Kenneth Quinnell
Chuck Rocha
Favianna Rodriquez
Mike Rogers
Julia Rosen
Jason Rosenbaum
Joel Rubin
Becca Rueble
Melissa Ryan
Erica Sackin
Rebecca Saltzman
C.M. Samala
Chris Savage
Regina Schwartz
David Segal
Marika Shaub
Anat Shenker
Kate Sheppard
Amelia Showalter
Claire Silberman
Richard Smith
Joe Sudbay
Tim Tagaris
Shaunna Thomas
Suzanne Turner
Tracy Van Slyke
David Waldman
Adam Weinstein
Marcy Wheeler
Jasiri X
Brian Young
Murshed Zaheed
Elijah Zarlin

I hope you’re making plans to attend Netroots Nation this June 20–23 in San Jose. You won’t want to miss it—we’re expecting our largest crowd ever and are expanding our program in anticipation of our biggest year yet!

To help you get there, we’re partnering again with Democracy for America and America’s Voice to offer 40 scholarships to deserving bloggers, organizers and activists.

Click here to apply for your scholarship now.

The Democracy for America Netroots Nation Scholarship Program is designed to send the movement’s best and brightest to the biggest progressive conference of the year.

This is your chance to tout what you’re doing to make your community a more progressive, inclusive place. And it’s our chance to ensure that activists and organizers—regardless of age, background, economic situation or geographic location—are able to participate, too.

And because the scholarship covers the cost of registration and lodging, it’s also a great way to help make sure you have the resources to be there.

It’s easy to apply. Just click here to fill out your application.

Each year, some of the brightest minds in our movement—from bloggers to social justice advocates, union workers to tech innovators—come to Netroots Nation to make new connections, beef up their organizing skills and build stronger relationships with others working on the issues they care most about. And each year has resulted in strengthened progressive alliances, deeper relationships and new collaborations.

The contest runs through May 7. The five applicants with the most votes at 11:59 PM PST will automatically win a scholarship. Others will be chosen by a selection committee. 

Are you ready to apply to be part of the 2013 scholars class? Then do it now.

Or, nominate someone you know to win a scholarship.

Best of luck!

Congratulations to the following organizations and companies for winning free booths in this year’s Netroots Nation Community and Exhibit Hall: Move to Amend, Being Liberal, American Atheists, Young Invincibles, Emerge California and Purple Mountain Institute.

We’re excited to announce that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will be returning to Netroots Nation this year in San Jose! But we’re also really honored to introduce you to this year’s Ask the Leader moderator, Zerlina Maxwell. If you haven’t had the opportunity to meet her yet, you’re going to want to make sure you’re following her on Twitter and other online venues.

Many evenings she’s battling it out on cable news with conservatives. After being activated by Barack Obama in 2008, she found her way to Netroots Nation in 2010 as a Democracy for America scholarship winner. Check out her announcement to our email list below. We feel like this announcement encompasses some of the best pieces of what we do at Netroots Nation each year.

My name is Zerlina Maxwell. As a feminist blogger, pundit and member of the Netroots community, I’m honored to be moderating a conversation with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi this summer at Netroots Nation.

Like past Ask the Leader sessions at Netroots Nation, questions will be solicited online in advance of the interview. I’ll collect questions on blogs and Facebook in the coming weeks, but you can start submitting questions now on Twitter.

Follow me on Twitter @zerlinamaxwell and let me know what you want to #AskPelosi.

I hope you’re planning on attending Netroots Nation. Over the past several years, the conference has given me a chance to meet many of the journalists and activists I’ve admired online for years–relationships that evolved into collaborative efforts and career successes, including this opportunity to interview House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on the big stage.

Like many of you, I was captivated in 2008 by Barack Obama’s candidacy and campaign. When his primary victory became official, I decided to become a part of history, eventually moving to Virginia to work on the campaign. That experience was the beginning of my Netroots story.

After the campaign, I returned to law school and became involved with New Leaders Council, which trained me on things like fundraising and communication. It was during that process that I realized I wanted to write about politics and become involved in punditry. So when I heard about the Netroots Nation scholarship program, I applied and won a scholarship to Netroots Nation 2010.

Since 2010, I’ve become heavily involved in the Netroots community, speaking on panels and being a part of their panel selection committee. So as a member of this community, I’m excited to moderate this conversation with Leader Pelosi.

What do you want to hear about this summer? Let me know on Twitter, and I’ll start compiling ideas.

Thanks for being a part of this with me.

Zerlina Maxwell

Planning to attend Netroots Nation this summer? Then consider coming in a day early for a free pre-convention activity on Wednesday: the second annual Netroots Nation Fire Ops 101 class.

Experience what it’s like to be a first responder at this one-day fire fighting and rescue operation scheduled for June 19 from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. It’s for speakers, bloggers and media representatives attending Netroots Nation 2013 (you must be registered for Netroots Nation to participate in Fire Ops).

As political attacks on fire fighters heat up, the insights learned during Fire Ops will better prepare participants to respond to outrageous statements being made by some political leaders about fire fighters and their jobs and service to the community.

Participants will don fire fighter protective clothing (hoods and helmets, turnout coats, pants, boots), strap-on self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and go to work, fighting actual fires, working in blackout smoke conditions, extricating victims and performing emergency medical care, giving you insight into what professional fire fighters and paramedics do every day and what they need to do their job and protect our communities.

This opportunity is sponsored by the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), in conjunction with San Jose Fire Fighters Local 230, the San Jose Fire Department and Netroots Nation.

Click here to reserve your spot.

From electing progressive champions like Elizabeth Warren to defeating Mitt Romney and his billions; from gaining a larger, more progressive majority in the Senate to winning marriage equality votes in four states, there were a lot of progressive victories in 2012. Some might even call it a mandate.

Those victories happened largely because of this community and your hard work, groundbreaking organizing and cutting-edge use of data and technology. One of our goals for Netroots Nation 2013 is to highlight those campaigns—and the people behind them—so we can all be better prepared for the next cycle.

Which campaigns were most interesting to you? What issues will be most important to you in the coming months? Whether it’s immigration or climate change, we want to know so we can build the agenda for Netroots Nation 2013 around what’s most important to you.

Each year, we ask for your help in developing and organizing the sessions you’ll attend at Netroots Nation. Your submissions will help us create an inclusive and engaging agenda for our 2013 conference—while also helping shape the national dialog for progressives in the coming months.

It’s easy to submit an idea. Click here for the guidelines and submission form.

When you’re brainstorming ideas, here are a few things to remember:

• How does my session help the broader progressive movement?
• How will it empower activists to take what they’ve learned and use it for the greater good?
• Do my panelists represent diversity—of ethnicity, gender, geography, age and viewpoint?
• Did I build in interaction with the audience?

While we always welcome ideas that run the gamut of progressive issues, each session should include new perspectives, voices and ideas.

By submitting a proposal, you are taking responsibility as the organizer of the session. We’ll help you along the way, but ultimately it’s your baby. Are you ready to submit?

The deadline for submissions is February 8, 2013.

Click here to read the full list of guidelines and submit your idea.

This coming year will help shape our nation’s future, and you’re going to help ensure sure it’s a progressive one.

Is there another political activist in your family? A friend who maybe got more involved in the political dialogue during this election cycle? Why not gift them (or yourself) with a ticket to the largest progressive gathering of the year?

For three days only, we’re offering a special holiday rollback rate to attend our 2013 convention in San Jose, June 20-23.

If you’ve been to Netroots Nation before, you know what a rich experience it is—from the hands-on trainings to the 70-plus panels to the chance to meet and reconnect with friends and allies from across the world.

This limited price is valid until Thursday, December 13 at midnight Pacific time.

Click here to reserve your spot at the special holiday rate of $245.